“Our duty is to bring order to our morals not to the materials for a book: not to win provinces in battle but order and tranquillity for the conduct of our life. Our most great and glorious achievement is to live our life fittingly.” Montaigne’s book ranges wildly back and forth from the political to the personal, but here he shows how the two are related directly.
The same process that challenges power and the evil acts of men also commands us to change our behavior, to live without care of the opinions of others and to discount your opinions as well. Montaigne’s book stands for itself not because of any literary genius, but because it is the unmistakable work of one man who, even when he was struggling to find its direction, understood its purpose.
And in the end, all of the heartbreaks and disappointments of life were not settled or processed in the course of the writing. There was no catharsis. His wisdom did not lead to a movement or even a broad understanding of the things he cared about. It was, especially in the last and greatest chapter, an act of defiance against a world that demands to define us. Montaigne defined his own success and by his measure, he succeeded in a way few people in history have ever experienced.